


Slow Hell

by Loethlin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, F/M, High School, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Polyamory, Melancholy, Mutual Pining, Romance, Unhappy Ending, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loethlin/pseuds/Loethlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How not to be together, or the recount of the greatest, most pointless love story, ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Powolne Piekło](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5233307) by [Loethlin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loethlin/pseuds/Loethlin)



> I am so sorry for writing in second person. Just imagine it being a half-assed Socratic questioning gone wrong, told to you in a sarcastic manner, and you'll be able to swallow it. I'm so sorry. I'm really scared right now, but I have to.

Suppose you are in high school and you have a sweetheart. It’s mutual! But there’s a catch: you never talk. Ok, you do talk, but about inconsequential stuff. Ask each other if you did your homework. Or comment on the music you gave each other. Or video games. Or whatever. And every time you have to actually exchange words, you both choke. It comes out in grunts and monosyllables. And yet you both always blush. So you stop talking after a while. 

But there is hand holding. Every break between classes you come up to each other, and then just hold hands. You both have your own friends circle, and they are hardly compatible, but after a while people just start to accept that you are linked at the hands and just stand there, but the other person never interferes. It’s just the way it is, you and them, just together. And yet not communicating at all. Just being there, silently comforting each other.

Then there’s a school trip, and there are some stolen kisses between looking at the wonders of architecture. A shared joint. A handjob, or several, in the dead of the night in a dark, filthy, sticky corridor of a hostel, somewhere on the outskirts of a city you’re trying to take in. And still no talking.

Then you go back to school, and nothing is changed, you still hold each other hands. Sometimes, when no one is looking, you hug. Or kiss. You both develop a habit of being early, just so you could steal some time with each other.

So it’s starting to drain you, this sort of possibly, _maybe_ state you developed, but you’re too tongue-tied to say anything. And you know they feel the same. You feel it in the way they kiss you, desperately. Or the way you hold their hand, so familiar a feeling now, but lately, it’s tighter, more demanding. It’s in the way the hickeys start to appear on your neck, and the way you can taste salt in the kisses sometimes.

Then there’s another school trip and you both lost your minds. It was the mountain air, you tell yourself, or maybe the way their fingers crawled up your back, but you’ve gone completely bonkers. You start to wonder, on that first night of the trip, with Ursa Major shining above you, the smell of spring grass tickling your nose, and the rocks digging into your back through the blanket, what kind of a fucked up relationship it is, when the most used words in your own personal vocabulary are “yes” and “please” and “harder”. And then you both devolve to grunts again, only this time, in pleasure, not embarrassment.

You give up trying after a while. By the time 3rd year rolls in, you start dating other people, and it’s great. You know _they_ ’re dating as well. But you two still hold hands. You steal kisses before school, and you never really drifted apart. And yet, after all this time, you still can’t talk to each other at all.

After all this time, you start wondering. Are you in love? With whom? The person you’re dating, or _them_? And you don’t know, because a relationship should be based on communication, or this is what everyone tells you. You start to wonder whether you are flawed, because obviously you can’t communicate.

But then the 3rd school trip rolls in and you gave up all the pretense. It was just for the benefit of both of you, because everyone knows by now. Evening comes, and you spend it with each other. And you both are still tongue-tied, and still your vocabulary consists of  “yes” and “please” and “harder”. And you love it.

You love every minute spent with them, and you love the way they look at you. And it’s not possessive, or demanding, not the way you kiss each other, or the way you fuck each other. They look at you all soft, and loving, and caring, and you’re pretty sure this is how you look at them, too. You’re both made out of love and never want this to end.

You never planned on the end. Never really considered what would it look like, when would it happen. You never talked about it because you never talk, you just sort of gravitate to each other, but not within earshot, apparently, because you still don’t talk at all. You just, and you’re pretty sure by now, love each other.

But then, it’s time to graduate, and you feel like your heart is about to stop, or maybe do a Chestburster, like Alien, because there’s this intense pain. You kiss under the bleachers and you hope it’s not the last time, not the last kiss, but you can taste it. Your tears are all bitter and salty, and so are theirs, and you grip each other so tightly you both will have bruises for a week, but it’s not good bye, it can’t be. 

But it is. The summer rolled in and all you have out of all this mess are bruises that fade all too quickly. All these years, and all you have is their fingertips grooved under your skin in violet and yellow, and you wonder, will you ever see each other again. You stare at your phone, with their number dialed, but can’t press “call”, because what would you say? You could never say anything that mattered. And neither could they. 

The summer is over, but you still touch the places their fingers clawed into your shoulders. You try to artificially prolong the existence of the marks they left on your skin, because maybe then, it would mean something. Maybe it wouldn’t have been just a pipe dream, maybe you can think there was actually something there.

But world fades into grey with autumn, and in time, your raw heart heals. You forget. You invest into the relationship you were in for the last year and a half with someone other than _them_. You get all excited about university. About all the new stuff you’ll learn. You slowly come back to life, you try to forget how good the air tasted in the mountains, how bad the art was in that city, how good their fingers felt, tracing your spine, soothing the goosebumps on your skin.

You go to the uni every morning, you take the tube, then the bus. You learn, you grow.

One winter day, you are on the tube, music blaring from your headphones, and then it stops, because _they_ walked in. The world shrinks into a tunnel, and all the air escapes you. When you take a breath, so needed after it was knocked out of you, it tastes like that mountain air when you held each other for the first time, and not the stinky, cloying stench of public transport.

You tried to forget all about them, you tried so hard, but there they are, with that deer in the headlights stare, and you’re pretty sure you have the same exact expression on your face.

You gravitate towards one another again, and you are surprised there is no applause from the crowd of commuters, because you clearly heard something. Probably the trumpets that crumbled Jericho’s walls, because this little event surely as fuck crumbled all your walls. 

You sink into a hug. You just stay that way, just hugging, and it feels so distant, the first time you hugged, like million years away, but you still remember what to do, how to hug them, despite all the thick woolen coats and stupid scarves, and their heat is radiating, warming you for the first time in so many months you lost count.

And then they have to get off the tube. Without a word, like it have been with you always. All you’re left with is the quickly fading heat of their body, and the scratch of their cold-chapped lips on your forehead. There’s also the emptiness their departure left, but you’re trying to ignore it, because that always worked so well.

You don’t see them the next day. Or the day after that.

You only bump into each other every month or so. Not for the lack of trying on your part. You try to figure out which train they take. What station they get off on. Try to cross-reference it with law practices, because you know they went to law school. 

During one of those rides, they notice a ring on your finger. It reflects the harsh lighting. You can see their eyes widen, but they hug you anyway. You kiss for the first time since graduation.

It’s been years now, two scientific degrees, and you still feel like something is missing. You’re engaged now, to a really good person whom you love dearly. You haven’t seen _them_ on the tube for several months now.

It’s winter again, and you’re working your way to a PhD. The tube is as cold and crowded and stinky as always. You feel like the scarf is strangling you, and the music is too loud and you just feel like you need to breathe, because there’s another panic attack brewing in you somewhere, but you can’t cry on the fucking tube, can you?

And there _they_ are, crowding your space, clinging to you like some fucking octopus, with their scarf on your face and arms around you and their lips pressing into yours. They’re just holding you, so tightly you can hardly breathe, and you notice, suddenly, that it’s been fourteen years of this bullshit and you just can’t stop hoping for something, _anything_.

They finally speak, after all these years, after the last “yes”, a decade ago. They say, “I missed you so much, I love you so much.”

But you see the gold band on their finger, gleaming in the harsh light of the train compartment. And it doesn’t match yours.


End file.
